Beyond the ‘Anthropocene’ impasse: The Colonial past and dissenting futures in the era of climate crisis

Abstract

The crisis of futurity is a much discussed theme of recent decades. The rapidly unfolding climate crisis, and the advent of the Anthropocene thesis in its wake, have unsettled our customary assumptions about time and history and further aggravated our prevailing sense of the crisis of futurity. How far is it still possible— in light of such developments—to think about dissenting futures? It is crucial to ask and answer that question. The idea of dissenting futures has been favored, for many years, by scholars who sought to oppose Eurocentric, hegemonic visions of futurity and the disappearance of alternative, counter-hegemonic visions of the future might signal considerable weakening of existing decolonial and postcolonial critiques of Eurocentrism. In this article I demonstrate that—despite the prevailing sense of crisis of futurity— avenues are still available today for avoiding future-making practices that would, a priori, rule out dissent. I especially take into account the dissenting views that have lately emerged among scientists on the question formalizing the Anthropocene. Such dissenting views, I argue, enable us to think beyond the confines of the debate on the chronological boundaries of the Anthropocene and revive decolonial and postcolonial quests for plural, dissenting futures.